Star Trek Universe 71 Story 1
by bmsquared
Summary: A short story set in an Alternate star trek universe that I have named Universe 71
Reclaimed Tears

The deck heaved once again and sent Clarisa sprawling once more. She didn't know what was happening. Her uniform torn and covered in blood, some of it hers but most of it not, she crawled towards the escape pod but before she reached it the artificial gravity gave out and she started floating.

How. How did this happen. One minute a routine sweep of a gravimetric distortion the next the Reclaimer was under attack by a vessel of unknown origin. At first she thought it had been the Romulans again. Just like Proxima Alpha. The war was not long over after all. But this ship was different. It was lit with a purple hue and fired weapons that cut through the NX class vessel like it wasn't even there.

She managed to grab a hold of some piece of bulkhead that had been blasted out of place in the battle. Or maybe that should be slaughter. She was about to start pulling herself towards the pod when there was an almighty roar behind her and suddenly it was all she could do to stop from being pulled back down the corridor by the air that was suddenly gushing out of the hull breach that had opened up below her feet.

Looking back she saw with horror that the strange beetle shaped craft was coming around for what would likely be it's final attack run. She tried to scream but the sound was stolen along with the air in her lungs by the vacuum at her feet. Just as she was sure the ship was about to fire a strange sensation took her and her world turned to darkness.

One Year Later

2375

USS Van Gogh

"Captain, we're getting readings off the anomaly" Lieutenant Commander Clarisa Saunders reported from the science station she currently occupied.

"And?" Commander Perell, the ships first officer, asked.

"It looks like we may have been right. There is definitely more then one ship in there. It isn't a gravimetric singularity like we first surmised on the Reclaimer. It's more in line with a quantum doorway such as the Iconians used"

"Are they different ships. Or the same one?" this question came from the Captain.

"I'm going to need to go over these readings more thoroughly to know for certain sir. But as a preliminary guess?" She asked. Captain LaForge looked at her and nodded. "Then yes sir. Apart from the vibrational frequencies all the ships are one and the same. The NX class USS Reclaimer. Lost 3 months after the Earth-Romulan War ended in the 2160s"

"A quantum trap. Pulling in one specific object from many universes!" Perell stated "How is that even possible?"

"No idea, number one, but it's why we're here" Geordi LaForge said to his friend. As an engineer he had never thought he would be sitting in the centre seat. Obviously fate had other ideas and here he was trying to unlock the mysteries of this strange anomaly in front of him. The command part of his brain was assessing the threat it might pose to the federation alliance at large. Especially as the war against the combined Dominion/Kazon Union was not going well. But the engineer in him was simply fascinated as to how this amazing sight before him might work.

"Captain, if I may" he heard from the science station

"You don't have to ask Clarisa. You're the closest thing to an expert we have here" He said with a soft smile. The young woman never asked for any of this. He truly felt sorry for her. Ripped from her own time and dimensional universe. If it was within his power to help her get home he would.

"I've sent the readings I have down to Seven in Astrometrics and she has a theory"

"Which is?" This again from Perell.

When Clarisa had first joined the crew of the Van Gogh seven months ago she hadn't taken to the man at all. He was stern and hard headed. Not that she could have taken to any of the crew really. Even coming from a war that had lasted years and decimated Earth and it's allies this Starfleet wasn't like the one she had left. That one had been about exploration first. Defence second. This new starfleet she found herself in was too militaristic. Even there science vessels, like the Van Gogh, were really only that in name only. The scientific instruments were years ahead of what she had back on the Reclaimer but not what should be on a top of the line survey ship. As she looked around she felt regret, not for the first time nor for the last, that half the stations were manned by Starfleet Marines. All of them tactical related. As she looked at the viewscreen she saw the distant engines flare on the two Valkyrie fighters that were flying escort for the capital ship. However in the last three months he had become the best friend she'd ever had. And the rest of the crew was starting to feel like family to her. She would always see herself as an explorer first. But she knew that one day. If she survived this war. She might find herself comfortable here. One day. But not yet.

"Seven believes that the anomaly acts like a buffer. It stores objects that it pulls in but it only has a limited memory. When it fills that memory to capacity and then tries to draw in something else it ejects something back out at random first" She said this with cold, clinical precision. Seeing that thing that had taken away all her friends. Her husband. That was responsible for the pain she now felt, thrust into another war that she had never asked for. It was the only way she could cope.

"So every time a copy of the Reclaimer is taken from one universe it forces out another. But why the Reclaimer?"

"I'm not sure number one!" an affectation he'd picked up from his last Captain, Tom Riker, but one he liked, Laforge continued "but the prevailing theory is that this anomaly exists outside of space and time. Perhaps it was designed to trap the Reclaimer. Perhaps it was just chance" LaForge looked at the screen on the arm of his command chair and felt his heart drop. There was too much information. It would take a lifetime. Several lifetimes to go through it all. He glanced over at Clarisa and saw in the way her shoulders had set that she realised this to. Yet still she worked diligently. She was a good Sailor. One of his best. All she had left was duty and he felt that she would never let that go. After the Enterprise had stumbled across her ship being attacked by a Dominon destroyer and saved her and two others, both of whom hadn't survived, she had thrown herself into her work. But all that data. They would never find a way to send her home. Not while she was still young. Maybe in another of those universes they could have. But this one had been home to war to long. Scientific curiosity had fallen by the wayside in the face of unending threat after unending threat.

"Clarisa" She looked at him as he said this "I'm so sorry!"

Home was forever out of her reach. Her old home at least. For the time being she had a job to do. Yet that didn't stop a single tear forming in her eye that she quickly blinked away. Quickly reclaimed.

"Thank you sir"

End...?


End file.
